.eco Greenhouse Gas Emissions Report - 2022
2022 Fiscal Year
Updated:
About this document
This document describes the calculation boundaries, methodologies, assumptions and key references used in the preparation of the FY2022 inventory of Scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Big Room’s operations. This document is written to meet the disclosure requirements under ISO 14064 (International Standard for GHG Emissions Inventories and Verification), as well as PAS 2060 (the BSI Standard for Carbon Neutrality).
The methodology, calculation and reporting statements have been validated by Inhabit. This report and statement of verification will be publicly available on our website.
Reporting period
The calculations are based on estimated emissions during Big Room’s 2022 fiscal year of October 1, 2021 to September 30, 2022. This is the first year that Big Room is calculating our greenhouse gas emissions, so it will also serve as the baseline year. Big Room’s carbon footprint will be recalculated and reported annually at the end of our fiscal year end each September.
Organizational boundary
We are following an operational control approach to defining our organizational boundaries for emissions calculations. We are considering direct and indirect emissions associated with Big Room’s core business, the operation of the .eco domain registry.
Big Room does not have a physical office that we operate from. Our corporate address is a PO Box in an office building in Vancouver; there is no work performed at this location.
As all work is performed remotely out of the homes of Big Room employees, we have decided to include 100% of the electricity and gas use in our homes in our Scope 3 emissions under Category 7: Employee commuting. We are excluding emissions from other activities occurring within the home, such as the purchase of food or goods for personal use, garbage or wastewater from our homes, home repairs or personal vehicle use as none of these pertain directly to Big Room’s business.
As Big Room provides digital services as our core business, we are including any emissions associated with their operation within our Scope 3 emissions. These digital services are operated from data centers run by our partners. We estimate our share of the energy use and associated emissions for our services running on the computer and network hardware in these data centers, along with the energy use of the Internet to transmit data to the end user and the associated estimated power draw of using our services on their digital devices. We follow the Sustainable Web Design methodology for our calculations. We are including the emissions associated with digital services in Scope 3 - Category 11: Use of sold products.
At this point, we are not including any estimated emissions from digital work productivity tools (video conferencing, document management, accounting software, etc) within our scope boundaries. This is under consideration for future reporting periods.
Calculated emissions
The tables below summarize our annual emissions for the 2021-2022 fiscal year by scope and source.
Scope 1
| Source | Annual emissions (t CO2e) |
Details |
|---|---|---|
| Company facilities (gas) | 0 | Big Room has no leased or owned company facilities. |
| Company vehicles | 0 | Big Room has no leased or owned company vehicles. |
Scope 2
| Source | Annual emissions (t CO2e) |
Details |
|---|---|---|
| Electricity | 0 | Big Room has no leased or owned company facilities. |
Scope 3
| Source | Annual emissions (t CO2e) |
Details |
|---|---|---|
| Category 1: Purchased goods and services | Excluded from scope, not material | Most products and services Big Room purchases are digital. Emissions are not significant. Will be considered in future reporting year. |
| Category 2: Capital goods | 0 | No capital goods were purchased in FY2022 for the business. |
| Category 3: Fuel and energy related activities | 0 | No extraction, production, and transportation of fuels and energy other than what is included in Scope 1 and 2. |
| Category 4: Upstream transportation and distribution | 0 | Our product (domain names) are virtual. No emissions associated with their transportation other than what is accounted for via our digital operations. |
| Category 5: Waste generated in operations | 0 | Emissions associated with waste or wastewater from our households are excluded. |
| Category 6: Business travel | 0 | No business travel occurred in FY2022 (COVID-19 pandemic). |
| Category 7: Employee commuting | 3.81 | As our work is performed remotely from our home offices, we are including 100% of our home electricity and gas emissions in this category. |
| Category 8: Upstream leased assets | 0 | Big Room has no upstream leased assets. |
| Category 9: Downstream transportation and distribution | 0 | As Big Room’s products are virtual they are not physically transported. The emissions associated with the transmission of our services are included in Category 11. |
| Category 10: Processing of sold products | 0 | Digital goods do not require intermediate processing. |
| Category 11: Use of sold products | 0.59 | Includes the operation and use of Big Room’s digital services. |
| Category 12: End-of-life treatment of sold products | 0 | Domain names are virtual and are deleted upon expiry. |
| Category 13: Downstream leased assets | 0 | We do not have assets we lease. |
| Category 14: Franchises | 0 | We have no franchisees. |
| Category 15: Investments | Excluded from scope, not material | Big Room does not hold any major investments |
| Total Scope 3 | 4.40 |
Calculation Methodology
Category 7: Employee Commuting
As we work exclusively remotely, we are accounting for 100% of the electricity and gas use in the homes of Big Room staff. Our homes are located in British Columbia, Canada and we are using emissions factors provided by the provincial government or local energy utilities. Emissions are based on the monthly billing data from our homes.
Electricity
| Source | Home offices |
|---|---|
| Annual electricity use (kWh) | 20360 |
| Electricity emissions intensity (g CO2e / kWh) | 9.7 |
| Electricity emissions (t CO2e) | 0.2 |
Gas
| Source | Home offices |
|---|---|
| Annual gas use (GJ) | 72 |
| Gas conversion factor (m3/GJ) | 25.5 |
| Gas emissions intensity (g CO2e / m3) | 1966 |
| Gas emissions (t CO2e) | 3.61 |
Total Category 7 emissions: 3.81t CO2e
References:
- BC Natural gas emissions factor (g/m3)
- FortisBC natural gas GJ to m3 conversion
- BC Hydro emissions factor for integrated grid
Category 11: Use of sold products
We account for the use of the digital services that are essential to the operation of the .eco top-level domain. These are internet services and applications that support .eco registrars, registrants and prospects to make use of the .eco domain extension.
Based on the guidance of the Sustainable Web Design method, emissions are calculated based on the total amount of data transferred from each service across the Internet. When the data is served from or processed at a specific location (such as a data center), then emissions factors for the local electricity utility are used. When the location is unknown or broadly distributed, a default emissions factor of 442g CO2e/kWh is used (as per the recommendations from the methodology).
| Service | Emissions (t CO2e) | Emissions intensity (g CO2e/request) |
|---|---|---|
| DNS | 0.11 | 0.000059 |
| .eco registry system (Fury) | 0.08 | 0.026 |
| go.eco | 0.11 | 0.006 |
| profiles.eco | 0.12 | 0.003 |
| bigroom.eco | 0.02 | 0.0009 |
| ecolabelindex.com | 0.16 | 0.005 |
Total Category 11 emissions: 0.59t CO2e
References:
Emissions management and monitoring
Emissions will be recalculated as part of an annual assessment. Detailed emissions calculations are included in a supplemental workbook that will be updated at least annually as part of each assessment. Our auditing partners have reviewed the detailed calculations.
The following data sources are used as the inputs for emissions calculations:
- Energy utility bills for home offices
- Network monitoring device metrics for calculating data transmission associated with digital services